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^tigxntn tinh tly^ War 

A SERMON 



BY THE 



REV. CHARLES WOOD. D.D. 




Preached in the 
CHURCH OF THE COVENANT 

WASHINGTON. D. C. 



SUNDAY EVENING 

DECEMBER 20. 191 4 

Piinled by Raquert 



C»rB^ri« Tost 
JUN 3 1924 







BELGIUM AND THE WAR 

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy moinitain: 
For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
Lord, as the waters eoi'er the sea." Isaiah 11 :9. 

. In Byron's day, Italy, with her bleeding heart under the 
heel of the conqueror and her fairest provinces torn from 
her helpless hands, was the "Niobe of nations" — so Byron 
called her, seeing her weeping like the Theban queen, 
though turned to stone by an angry God, for her slaughtered 
children. 

Today Belgium is the "Niobe of nations.'' Early this 
summer there were living in Belgium seven million and a 
half of the most contented people in Europe. Few of them 
were millionaires; few of them had what we call "wealth" 
in America; but they were all industrious and economical 
and earning each day their daily bread, with prayer, and 
looking fearlessly into the future. 

Today the population of Belgium is a scant three mil- 
lions. All these last weeks and months every avenue of 
egress and exit, by land or by sea, has been thronged and 
choked by masses of men, women and children hurrying into 
Holland, France or England. 

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One-third of these remaining three miUions are paupers. 
There are large numbers of people everywhere in 
Europe, as well as in Belgium, who are living from 
hand to mouth, but with perfect satisfaction to them- 
selves. Many of these Belgians had, as their entire pos- 
sessions, a little plot of ground, often less than an acre, or 
a little shop, and, when ejected from the ground or 
shop, they were driven from what they looked upon as an 
earthly paradise, and into pauperism as loathsome to them 
as it would be to us — pauperism so deep, despairing, and 
hopeless that you and I, perhaps, have never seen the 
like of it. 

All this might have been prevented by a scrap of 
paper with the King's signature upon it, or by a nod of 
the King's head or a wave of his hand. But these petty 
farmers, merchants and shopkeepers sided with their sov- 
ereign and were ready to lay their country and themselves 
on the altar of the Ideal. They refused, with all the conse- 
quences before their eyes, to join in a war in which they 
had no more interest than we. They threw their little 
band of soldiers against the most highly trained army, "the 
best fighting machine," it has been called, in Europe, mak- 
ing a marvelous and altogether incomprehensible resistance. 

Driven slowly back, the Belgians saw their fields devas- 
tated, their cities hke Ternionde, Alost, and Dinant. burned; 
their university town of Louvain, with its beautiful cathe- 
dral, destroyed. They saw their capital, Brussels, often 
compared with Paris, occupied by foreign troops, and their 
great commercial city, Antwerp, not only occupied, but 
placed with Brussels under an exhausting and seemingly 
impossible tribute. 

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If this be war, as we are told; if any army — if every 
army — under like circumstances must commit such deeds 
as were thought possible only in the dark ages, then war 
is as subversive of civiHzation as it is of Christianity. 

This little kingdom of Belgium has been the shuttle-cock 
and football of Europe, knocked and kicked hither and yon 
from the time when all there was of it was a semi-civilized 
tribe called the Belgae inhabiting its marshes and forests. 
To this tribe belonged one of those famous "three parts" 
into which Caesar said "all Gaul is divided." And Csesar 
did his very best to compel those three parts to become a 
single Roman province. But those few savage Belgians 
had no more hesitation in resisting Cresar's legions 
than their descendants had in resisting "the best fight- 
ing troops in the world." Ever since Cresar's day 
Belgium has been the battlefield of Europe, the "Bowl" 
in which kings and emperors have struggled for the goal of 
continental or universal supremacy. Whoever conquered, 
Belgium lost and was tossed with the rest of the loot to 
the victor. She belonged in rapid succession to Austria, to 
France, to Spain, and to Holland. 

Not only did Julius Csesar fight his first recorded battle 
in Belgium, but there also King Clovis met and conquered 
his foes. There the Saracens, it is said, were hurrying 
when the blow of Charles Martel's hammer near Poitiers 
staggered and stopped them. There, most terrible of all the 
events in Belgium's tragic history till the wave of this war 
swept over her, came an army of the crudest soldiers, as 
they were reputed, in Europe, under the leadership of the 
Duke of Alva. To speak Alva's name today in the ears of 



Belgians or of Hollanders is to bring up before the eyes of 
those who hear a vision of a monster of inhumanity. 

In a single year, it is said, 75,000 persons were put to 
death by Alva and his soldiers. For the most part they 
were non-combatants and the only crime that was charged 
against them was that they were patriotic, or that they were 
Protestants, or that they were possessed of treasure de- 
sired by Alva or his minions. 

In 1568 Antwerp was called the wealthiest city in Europe. 
She possessed at least 500 marble mansions, for the records 
prove that in that year 500 mansions of marble were de- 
stroyed in the so-called "Spanish Fury."' You may read 
the story of it in "The Rise of the Dutch Republic," by our 
own Motley, but if you have not a heart of iron you 
cannot read it without tears. 

For three days the city was sacked by Spanish soldiers, 
who were given full license to do as they hked with the 
persons and the property of the inhabitants. That 8,000 
men, women and children were massacred in those three 
days is the least terrible part of the story. From the in- 
fant just born to the octogenarian, without discrimination of 
sex, all alike suffered inconceivable and unspeakable tortures 
in this debauch of demons. The pavements of the churches, 
to which crowds had fled for safety, were piled high with 
corpses and the narrow streets were impassable with the 
wounded, the dying and the dead. Compared with the 
devastation wrought in this pandemonium, all that hap- 
pened in two invasions by the emissaries of Louis XIV, 
and in the English invasion of Marlborough, the emissary 
of Queen Anne and the despotic Sarah Churchill and the 



final desperate and despairing struggle of Napoleon at Wa- 
terloo but a few miles from Brussels for the throne of the 
world, were of trifling importance. 

The prosperity of modern Belgium, since her neutrality 
was guaranteed in 1839 by England, France, Austria, Rus- 
sia and Prussia, is not by any means due to the extent of 
her territory, for Belgium is only a little triangle between 
France, Germany, Holland and the sea. That triangle is 
but 165 miles long and 120 miles broad, containing 11,400 
square miles. It is about the same size as two of our rather 
diminutive States, Rhode Island and Connecticut, with a 
fair-sized State like Massachusetts thrown in. 

Belgium has, it is true, 900,000 square miles of territory 
in the Congo, but, at present, they are almost negligible. 
Neither has Belgium enormous mineral wealth like our 
Nevada, Colorado and California. She has a belt of coal 
and iron coming up out of northwestern France, which 
gives her a value altogether disproportionate to her size. 
For coal and iron in Europe will soon be seemingly of 
greater value than silver and gold, for you cannot make 
cannon or warships out of the so-called "precious metals." 
This iron of Belgium is the "hematite" or blood-red iron, 
and is considered essential for fine tools and weapons of war. 

But Belgium's real wealth comes, not out of the bowels 
of the earth, but from the surface, from her Lilliputian 
farms. 

We have in our northwest what we call wheat lands; 
great plains, boundless, shimmering under the sun, palpi- 
tating with the heat of the long summer, and from those 
plains our farmers succeed in raising, on the average, fif- 



teen bushels to the acre. The Belgians, with their little 
holdings, raise twice that, and then seven extra bushels 
tossed in for good measure. With Belgium's productivity 
our single State of Texas could find place and provisions 
for the whole population of Europe, and all our States to- 
gether, if equally well cultivated, could support the entire 
population of the planet. The Belgians are not the most 
highly educated people in Europe, but they were the first 
to have public schools, though these schools were intended 
almost entirely for boys. 

It means very much to Belgium that, in her picturesque 
and musty town of Ghent, the greatest of Spanish 
kings and German emperors, Charles V, was born. 
But it means a great deal more to us Americans that 
on the 24th of December, 1814, in that same town of Ghent, 
a treaty of peace was signed between the United States and 
Great Britain. More significant still, that treaty has been 
kept to this hour. It is not necessarily true that treaties 
are made only to be broken in a great crisis. Wherever 
the high contracting parties take as their cry, not "dominion 
or death," but the slogan of the French Republic reversed — 
not "liberty, equality, fraternity" — but "fraternity, equality, 
liberty" — then solemn promises, though made by nations, 
will be solemnly observed. 

Well would it be for these warring potentates of Europe 
if they might, on the 24th day of this December, journey 
to that sleepy little town of Ghent, "where it is always after- 
noon," and, standing together before that house in which 
Charles V was born, recall his life, with its unrivaled 
power, pomp, splendor, and remember that there came a 



day when, possessing all that they are fighting for and 
more, he laid down the mightiest scepter a human hand 
ever held for the staff of a penitent monk. "So passes 
away the glory of the world." 

While the Belgians are prond of Charles V, they are not 
nearly so proud of him as conqueror or penitent monk as 
they are of their painter, Rubens. Rubens, it is true, was 
not born in Belgium, but he spent most of his life in Ant- 
werp and did his best work there. His two greatest pic- 
tures, "The Elevation on the Cross" and "The Descent 
from the Cross," are hanging, or were hanging till a few 
weeks ago, in the Antwerp Cathedral. 

Out of a dispute over a plot of ground came the first 
of these paintings. Surely there has been no plot of ground 
in Belgium, or in all Europe, that has been more pro- 
ductive. No quarrel before or since has resulted in so 
much good to the world. 

Symbolic to Belgian eyes must "The Elevation on the 
Cross" have seemed during these weeks in which Belgium, 
herself, was being lifted up upon the cross of sorrow by 
hands as hard as those of the Roman soldiers. But if 
Belgium should ever come to see that as Jesus, our Lord, 
hung upon His cross that He might conquer the enmity 
of man, and beat down forever that great serpent, Satan, 
beneath his feet — so she, by her sorrows, has had a part in 
putting an end to strife between nations, then, indeed, may 
she feel that some, at least, of her griefs have been gains. 
All persons or peoples who go to the cross rather than sur- 
render truth and righteousness and honor are crucified 
with Christ. 



Intensely as we disapprove of the treatment that the 
Congo Free States were reported — doubtless with too much 
truth — to have received at the hands of Leopold II, we are 
not prepared to believe that because the people of the Congo 
were tortured by a luxurious and lecherous king to increase 
revenues which he squandered on his favorites — that there- 
fore the innocent people of Belgium, many of whom have 
never even heard of the Congo, are being crushed beneath 
the horrors of this w-ar. 

That would be a kind of rudimentary justice which satis- 
fies the heart of a savage and the hearts of some who are 
semi-civilized as well. But it was against just that sort 
of justice that our Lord made his protest. When the 
Pharisees came to Jesus and said, "Who did sin?" as they 
pointed to the blind man, they were not thinking of hygienic, 
but of ethical sin, of transgression of God's holy law. "Who 
did sin, this man or his parents?" — "somelDody must have 
sinned, for this is plainly the penalty." And Jesus said, 
"Nobody; this is an act of God and you are not ready yet 
for the full explanation of it." "Thou knowest not 
now; thou shalt know hereafter." So, too, when 
they came to Him and asked about the eighteen men 
who were trapped under the falling stones and timbers 
of the tower of Siloam, what particular sin they had com- 
mitted, Jesus made the same reply. They were sinners, of 
course, as all men are, but they were not particular sinners 
who needed to be particularly punished in just that par- 
ticular way. 

Unless a man has the inspiration of the old Hebrew 
prophets, he dare not say that Belgium is suffering 

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now for the sins of Leopold II. But you and I can 
say that Belgium is suffering for her situation. Neither 
would we dare say that England is suffering because 
there have been Englishmen who may have made large for- 
tunes by the sale of opium; or that France is suffering be- 
cause there may have been Frenchmen who ground down 
the natives of Madagascar for gold ; or that Germany is 
suffering because there may have been Germans who have 
enslaved both white men and black men in order to grow 
rich rapidly. But they are all suffering the agonies of this 
war, because they have all alike, though in varying degrees, 
refused to seek first the Kingdom of God and His right- 
eousness. They are not fighting in Europe tonight because 
Christianity has failed, but because these warring kings 
and emperors have failed in living up to the Christianity 
which they have professed. 

Do you believe that, if a decade ago the nations of 
Europe had adopted the Golden Rule as final, there would 
be any war in Europe now? Do you believe that if, at the 
close of this war, they shall honestly and sincerely adopt 
that Rule as the last word concerning the relation, not 
only of man to man, but of nation to nation, that there will 
ever be another war in Europe ? Then shall dawn that day 
the Prophet foresaw "When they shall not hurt nor destroy 
in all God's holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of 
the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." 

Our pity has gone out toward Belgium in a great throb 
of desire that, so far as possible, we might undo that which 
has been done. If our hearts have, indeed, been harrowed, 
then out of the furrow should come not only pity, but 



piety. Only piety can protect pity from the winds that 
level it to the earth and from the sun that scorches and 
shrivels it. If the pity that you and I have for Belgium 
meets with piety, if piety and pity blend in our breasts, then 
shall we find ourselves not only pitying our poor brothers 
of Belgium, but we shall be moved with a piety which will 
enable us to pray even for those whose hands are as stained 
with innocent blood as the hands of the men who elevated 
the Christ on His cross: "Father, forgive them; for they 
know not what they do." 



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